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July 13th

My dear Hooker

Your letter, as usual, has been most valuable to me. I am delighted at what you say
about Huxley's answer & I agree most entirely: it is excellent
& most clear; I thought from the first that he was right, but was not able to
put it clearly to myself.— By the way do you remember Huxley's entry
of “Darwin, an absolute & eternal hermaphrodite”: he can find no certain case, nor have I ever been able. Apropos
to my asking him whether the ciliograde acalephes could not take in spermatozoa by the
mouth, which takes in so much water, he gives me a sentence
like our case of pollen, in which nature seems to us so clumsy & wasteful. He
says “The indecency of the process is to a certain extent in favour of its
probability, nature becoming very low in all senses amongst these
creatures”. What a book a Devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy,
wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature! With respect to
crossing, from one sentence in your letter I think you misunderstand me: I am very far from believing in hybrids; only in crossing of same
species or of close varieties. These two or 3 last days, I have been
observing wheat & have convinced myself that L. Deslongchamps is in
error about impregnation taking place in closed flower; ie of
course I can judge only from external appearances. By the way R. Brown once told me that the use of brush on stigma of grasses was
unknown: do you know its use?

You once asked me whether I had your Lemann's list of Madeira plants, I see in Forbes Memoir in note, that
you lent it him, as he says; probably he never returned it—

I enclose old note of yours about Lyallia; it may refresh your memory: as for this
plant & the Pringlea, I shd think the
Vestiges' theory that they were converted algæ, was as good as
any! Confound & exterminate them.—

Very many thanks for the answers about Chile & New Zealand plants.

You say most truly about multiple creations & my notions; if any one case could
be proved, I shd be smashed: but as I am
writing my Book, I try to take as much pains as possible to give the strongest cases
opposed to me, & offer such conjectures as occur to me: I have been working your
Books as richest (& vilest) mine against me: & what hard work I have had
to get up your New Zealand Flora! As I have to quote you so often, I
shd like to refer to Mullers case of
Australian Alps:—where is it published? Is it a Book? a correct reference
would be enough for me, though it is wrong ever to quote without looking
oneself.— I shd like to see very
much Forbes sheets, which you refer to; but I must confess (I hardly know why) I have
got rather to mistrust poor dear Forbes.—

There is wonderful ill logic in his famous & admirable memoir on
distribution, as it appears to me, now that I have got it
up so as to give the Heads in a page.— Depend on it, my saying is a true one,
viz that a compiler is a great man, & an original man a common-place
man. Any fool can generalise & speculate; but oh my Heavens to get up at
second hand a New Zealand Flora, that is work.—

I am so glad to hear about Henslow & wheat: I do hope there was no wheat-field
near: he ought to state distance & whether flowering coincides with that of
wheat.—

And now I am going to beg almost as great a favour, as a man can beg of another: and I
ask some 5 or 6 weeks before I want favour done, that it may appear
less horrid: it is to read, but well copied out, my pages (about 40!!) on
alpine floras & faunas arctic & antarctic floras & faunas
& the supposed cold mundane period.— It
wd be really an enormous advantage to me; as I am sure otherwise to
make Botanical blunders. I would specify the few points on which I most want your
advice. But it is quite likely that you may object on ground that you might be
publishing before me (I hope to publish in a year at furthest) so that it would hamper
& bother you; & secondly you may object to loss of time; for I daresay
it would take hour & half to read.— It certainly would be immense
advantage to me; but of course you must not think of doing it, if it would interfere
with your own work.—

My dear Hooker | Ever yours | C. Darwin

I do not consider this request in futuro, as breaking my promise to give no
more trouble for some time.

From Lyell's letters he is coming round at a Railway pace on the mutability of
species, & authorises me to put some sentences on this head in my preface.

I shall meet Lyell on Wednesday at Ld
Stanhopes & will ask him to forward my letter to you;
though as my arguments have not struck him; they cannot have force, & my head
must be crotchety on subject; but the crotchets keep firmly there.— I have
given your opinion on continuous land, I see, too strongly.

Dated by the relationship to the letter from J. D. Hooker, 10 July
1856.

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f2 1924.f2

See letter to T. H. Huxley, 1 July [1856], n. 2.

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f3 1924.f3

See letter to T. H. Huxley, 8 July [1856].

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f4 1924.f4

See the final paragraph of the letter from J. D. Hooker. 10 July
1856.

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f5 1924.f5

Loiseleur Deslongchamps 1842–3. CD recorded having read this work on
5 April 1856 (Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix IV, 128: 18).
There is a copy of the first part in the Darwin Library–CUL.

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f6 1924.f6

Robert Brown.

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f7 1924.f7

A reference to the manuscript flora of Madeira drawn up by Charles Morgan Lemann
before his death in 1852. The list had evidently accompanied his herbarium, which was
deposited at Kew (R. Desmond 1977).

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f8 1924.f8

E. Forbes 1846, p. 401 n.

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f9 1924.f9

A joke between CD and Hooker relating to an article about the Kerguelen Land cabbage
(Pringlea antiscorbutica) printed in Chambers's Edinburgh
Journal n.s. 5 (1846): 76–7. See Correspondence
vol. 3, letter from J. D. Hooker, 1 February 1846, and
Correspondence vol. 5, letter to J. D. Hooker,
5 June [1855].

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f10 1924.f10

E. Forbes 1846.

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f11 1924.f11

A reference to the manuscript pages of what CD called ‘the before part of
Geograph Distr.’ that eventually formed the bulk of chapter 11, on
geographical distribution, of his species book (see Natural selection,
pp. 531, 534–66).

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f12 1924.f12

See letter to Charles Lyell, 5 July [1856] and n. 7.

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f13 1924.f13

See letter to J. D. Hooker, 5 July [1856]. CD had previously met
Philip Henry Stanhope at Stanhope's family seat in Chevening, Kent, and on
several occasions he went to Stanhope's London house to join ‘one of
his parties of historians and other literary men’ (Autobiography,
p. 111).